Susan Renee Loepp (born 1967) is an American

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...

who works as a professor of mathematics at

Williams College Williams College is a Private college, private liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Williamstown, Massachusetts, United States. It was established as a men's college in 1793 with funds from the estate of Ephraim ...

. Her research concerns

commutative algebra Commutative algebra, first known as ideal theory, is the branch of algebra that studies commutative rings, their ideal (ring theory), ideals, and module (mathematics), modules over such rings. Both algebraic geometry and algebraic number theo ...

Professional career

Loepp graduated from

Bethel College (Kansas) Bethel College is a private Christian college in North Newton, Kansas, United States. It is affiliated with Mennonite Church USA The Mennonite Church USA (MC USA) is an Anabaptist Christian denomination in the United States. Although the org ...

in 1989,Susan Loepp
The National Alliance for Doctoral Studies in the Mathematical Sciences, retrieved 2014-12-25. and earned her

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

in 1994 from the

University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public university, public research university in Austin, Texas, United States. Founded in 1883, it is the flagship institution of the University of Texas System. With 53,082 stud ...

, under the supervision of Raymond Heitmann. After postdoctoral studies at the

University of Nebraska A university () is an educational institution, institution of tertiary education and research which awards academic degrees in several Discipline (academia), academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase , which roughly ...

she took her present faculty position at Williams. She has publications in

Journal of Algebra ''Journal of Algebra'' (ISSN 0021-8693) is an international mathematical research journal in algebra. An imprint of Academic Press, it is published by Elsevier Elsevier ( ) is a Dutch academic publishing company specializing in scientific, te ...

and

Journal of Pure and Applied Algebra The ''Journal of Pure and Applied Algebra'' is a monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal covering that part of algebra likely to be of general mathematical interest: algebraic results with immediate applications, and the development of algebraic t ...

Book

With

William Wootters William "Bill" Kent Wootters is an American theoretical physicist, and one of the founders of the field of quantum information theory. In a 1982 joint paper with Wojciech H. Zurek, Wootters proved the no-cloning theorem, at the same time as De ...

, she is the co-author of the book ''Protecting Information: From Classical Error Correction to Quantum Cryptography'' (Cambridge University Press, 2006). The book covers topics in

quantum cryptography Quantum cryptography is the science of exploiting quantum mechanical properties to perform cryptographic tasks. The best known example of quantum cryptography is quantum key distribution, which offers an information-theoretically secure soluti ...

and

quantum computing A quantum computer is a computer that exploits quantum mechanical phenomena. On small scales, physical matter exhibits properties of wave-particle duality, both particles and waves, and quantum computing takes advantage of this behavior using s ...

and the potential impacts of

quantum physics Quantum mechanics is the fundamental physical Scientific theory, theory that describes the behavior of matter and of light; its unusual characteristics typically occur at and below the scale of atoms. Reprinted, Addison-Wesley, 1989, It is ...

. These potential impacts include quantum computers which, if built, could crack our currently used public-key cryptosystems, and quantum cryptography which promises to provide an alternative to these cryptosystems.

Awards and honors

In 2007, Loepp won the Young Alumnus Award from Bethel College. In 2010, she won the Northeastern Section of the Mathematical Association of America’s Teaching Award. In 2012, she won a Deborah and Franklin Tepper Haimo Award for Distinguished College or University Teaching of Mathematics from the

Mathematical Association of America The Mathematical Association of America (MAA) is a professional society that focuses on mathematics accessible at the undergraduate level. Members include university A university () is an educational institution, institution of tertiary edu ...

, which honors “college or university teachers who have been widely recognized as extraordinarily successful and whose teaching effectiveness has been shown to have had influence beyond their own institutions.”Susan Loepp Wins National Award for Excellence in Teaching Mathematics
Williams College, January 27, 2012, retrieved 2014-12-25. In 2013, she was elected as one of the inaugural

fellow A fellow is a title and form of address for distinguished, learned, or skilled individuals in academia, medicine, research, and industry. The exact meaning of the term differs in each field. In learned society, learned or professional society, p ...

s of the

American Mathematical Society The American Mathematical Society (AMS) is an association of professional mathematicians dedicated to the interests of mathematical research and scholarship, and serves the national and international community through its publications, meetings, ...

. Loepp was an

(AMS) Council member at large from 2019-2021.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Loepp, Susan Renee 1967 births Living people 20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians Bethel College (Kansas) alumni University of Texas at Austin College of Natural Sciences alumni Williams College faculty Fellows of the American Mathematical Society 20th-century American women mathematicians 21st-century American women mathematicians